Oi weh! The shabbily iconic TAP Gallery Theatre, Darlo, has a slatted, wall-mounted box, with green LED, that looks for all the world like an airconditioner. (It reminds me of Basil Fawlty, questioning the efficacy of a patron's hearing aid: 'is that a hearing aid, or just a button on a string?'). But the truth is the room is utterly airless, which probably explains why the floor is littered with dead canaries. Or would be, were they placed there as a barometer of deoxygenation. A friend has suggested masks should drop from the ceiling. I reckon saline drips are a necessity. This harsh reality is neither an actor, nor a producer's friend, let alone a patron's. For actors, it may be a near-death experience. And since Valentino Musico's 25Eight is, in part, about bifurcation of body and soul, the resonance proves a little too eery.Musico seems to be trying to impress us with his arcane vocabulary, starting with the word bifurcation. While there are likely to be some who will glean its meaning from context, or know it anyway, there will be doubtless others who are hankering to escape the hell-on-earth vault to Google definition. It simply refers to splitting, into two parts; in this case, body and soul. There's an arguably Marxist political leaning at the heart of 25Eight with which I'm in profound sympathy: it mercilessly parodies the ever-growing, might-is-right imperative of the corporation, focussing in on the commensurate propensity towards jargon, buzzwords, acronyms and 'keep out!' language in general. The trouble is, in pursuing it so self-indulgently, the play, in trying desperately hard to be clever and funny, becomes drowned in a sea of metalanguage of its own, further obscured by lapses of diction and memory; (for which I don't particularly blame the actors, given the sheer density of unfamiliar pseudo-bureaucratese).
Tony (Diego Retamales) is the first employee of United Synergies that's had his body rent asunder from his soul, resulting in a doubling of his efficiency: he now puts in 'twenty-five, eight'. His soul takes it upon itself to try and subvert mindless allegiance to the God-like organisation, by seducing the brand new CFO (Natalie Lopes), Numera Jijinsky, who happens to be his ex-girlfriend, into the unholy act of questioning what it's all about. This premise seems to be at least somewhat autobiographical, if Musico's programme notes are anything to go by. 'Many years ago, in my day job as a lawyer, I was offered corprotron employment; an offer I repelled with garlic, wooden stakes and silver bullets'. If only I didn't feel similarly about this show-off-to-no-good-purpose play, which spruiks the genius of the writer at the expense of performers, audience and the play itself.
David Attrill has more than one too many fumbles as the CEO, who needs to be super-slick and mechanical, to sell the idea. I'm not sure it's ideal casting. Richard Hilliar is Mr Factotum, doing his best as an unquestioning lackey, who later develops vague notions of grandeur when he falls under the spell and influence of Numera and Tony, who corrupts him with Italian-style hot chocolate. Unfortunately, the actors are at the mercy of this wilderness of wordiness. Retamales seems to cope best. The others seem to operate in varying states of self-consciousness. Again, I don't blame them. The ghost of the script haunts every corner of the production and makes it just as hard to assess, for example, the efficacy of Ira Hal Seidenstein: a script makes or breaks a play and this one, suffice to say, doesn't make it.
Yes, it's got a motive. And a premise. A heart. A conscience. An unbifurcated soul. But the outcome is so busy and buzzing with words and doublespeak it becomes virtually unintelligible gibberish, a kissing cousin of the very poppycock it's heat-seeking to torpedo. Irony, if ever there was. The question is, is it intentional? I fear not. Were it so, one could argue the play makes its point through immersion, but what kind of sadistic writer would put an audience through that? As if we don't get enough of it out there, in Jurassic Park. I, for one, by dint of an enduring advertising career, have seen the life, colour and oxygen progressively sucked out of a creative industry and the battery-hen office layouts that pass, or are passed off, as stimulating environments. These are the coalmines and sweatshops of the twenty-first century, perpetrated by cynical, all-powerful multinationals (and mononationals alike). It's not news. Too true, as I s'pose Musico is eager to point out, not so very many of us seem to be awake to it or, if we are, prepared to, er, buck the system. Yet, while I feel philosophical affinity with the playwright, I don't have much truck with his execution, which is egoistic and torturous. For a play that zeroes in on the clear and present danger of the 'me, me, me!', 'more, more, more!' ethos, Musico, in his way, seems to embrace it: his issue isn't so much conspicuous consumption (more and more stuff leading us to become and feel more and more stuffed), but conspicuous presumption: none of us really needs a lecture in the bleeding obvious. Especially one expressed in such arcane lingo, by jingo!
Seidenstein has elsewhere cited the moral of the story is to enjoy what we've got. When given a play like this, that's a mighty tall order.
Not even having Dave Leslie (of Baby Animals' fame) as 'music designer' saves the day. Or the play.
TAP Gallery
25EIGHT
by Valentino Musico
Directed by Ira Hal Seidenstein
Venue: TAP Gallery | 45 Burton St., Darlinghurst
Dates: 11 – 22 Dec, 2012
Tickets: $25 – $20
Bookings: www.trybooking.com/CBCB
